Author photo

By Ken Graham
The Times 

240 Signatures

 

April 10, 2014

Next Door to The Times's office in Waitsburg is a lovely coffee shop called the Coppei Café. We have a door directly into it - we don't even have to go outside.

Last Thursday I ordered a tall latte and sat down in a comfortable chair in the café, along with all of the members of the Washington State Legislature who represent our 16th district. They were there to talk about the recent legislative session.

The three of them - Senator Mike Hewitt, Representative Maureen Walsh and Representative Terry Nealey, along with media coordinator John Sattgast - were on a tour of media outlets in the district. I have no doubt that we provided the nicest accommodations. It was definitely nicer than the board room at the U-B, where they were headed next.

I brought up the fact that many news outlets in the state have declared the recent legislative session a failure, and that many hoped-for accomplishments (by those media outlets) didn't get accomplished. All three objected in unison.

"You know how many bills the governor had on his desk to sign at the end of the session?" Walsh asked "240." She answered her own question before I had a chance to guess, but I would have guessed lower. "Does that sound like we didn't do anything?"

"This was a 'supplemental' session," Hewitt said emphatically. "All we are supposed to do I is make adjustments to the two-year budget we passed last year."

"The budget needed 240 adjustments?" I asked.

"It's an election year," Walsh said. She explained that every legislator is trying to push through a pet bill, which will help endear them to the voters in their district.

One example of a non-budgetary feel-good bill might be the naming of Palouse Falls as the state's official waterfall. That bill was passed this session and its ceremonial signing at the falls was featured on the front page of The Times a couple of weeks ago.

Don't get me wrong, Palouse Falls is stunning, and if any waterfall deserves that distinction, it does. But I'm not sure how that improves the budget.

We talked for awhile about education, transportation and marijuana. These are topics I covered at length in a previous report about my interview with Terry Nealey last month. So I won't go into detail here. I was assured that all three issues will be addressed, with gusto, in next year's long session - after this fall's elections. I was also assured that the budget balanced this year, and no new taxes were imposed.

After we were done, I got up out of the soft chair and disposed of my now-empty cup before entering my office through the back door. I decided that I agreed with Hewitt, Walsh and Nealey that, if anything, the legislature probably did too much rather than too little.

I also want to mention that, at the beginning of our meeting, I asked Nealey if he'd had the opportunity to play basketball with Governor Inslee - something he did a couple of times the year before.

Yes, he said. In fact the governor invited him to play in a charity game, in which a team of elected officials and staff members played a team of retired pro athletes. Nealey's and the governor's team won by one point.

"I was the only Republican on the team," Nealey said. So, thanks to him, it was a bipartisan victory!

 

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